A Dumfries nurse kicked an elderly dementia patient on the leg after she knocked a packet of jaffa cakes out of his hands.

Ian Rafferty was sacked over the attack and has now been told that he will need to be supervised in any other job he takes for a period of one year after a panel found his fitness to practise is impaired.

Mr Rafferty, 59, kicked the 80-year-old woman in the leg at a care home in Annan causing her injury while he was employed as a charge nurse at the unit on July 29, 2011.

He was present at a misconduct hearing held by The Nursing and Midwifery Council in Edinburgh earlier this month.

Mr Rafferty denied the allegations and claimed the woman would “frequently get into tussles with other female patients” so it was not unusual for her to have cuts and scrapes.

He said he had offered the patient a jaffa cake to gauge what kind of mood she was in but that she swore at him and knocked them out of his hand. He said he picked the cakes off the floor and walked to another room.

However one witness on duty that day told the panel she saw Mr Rafferty kick the woman on the shin with the inside of his left foot.

The witness said the patient screamed and asked her if she had seen “what he just did to me”.

The elderly woman then limped towards the lounge crying.

The worker told the panel that when Mr Rafferty realised she was there he became flustered.

The patient had a mark on her leg with a cut across the middle the width of a thumb nail. There was blood running down her leg.

However, Mr Rafferty claimed he wiped the woman’s leg as it was bleeding with what looked to him that a small spot had been flicked off.

He said the patient was known to pick and scratch any marks on her skin and that’s why he didn’t fill in an incident form about the wound.

There were no concerns raised by members of staff that the patient was in any pain and he assessed the injury was not serious enough to warrant such action. He accepted that although he should have, he didn’t record it on the patient’s notes, but did verbally pass the information on to a nurse at the end of his shift.

The panel felt there was conflicting evidence from the witness and Mr Rafferty and concluded that his actions amounted to misconduct.

His solicitor said it was a “one-off isolated incident in an otherwise unblemished and successful career in nursing with dementia and elderly patients”.

After the incident came to light, Mr Rafferty was dismissed from his job at the NHS unit on November 21, 2011, after 12 years there.

The panel did say that, based on the evidence, Mr Rafferty posed a “limited” risk to the public and that he should be allowed to continue to work as a nurse subject to conditions.

For a period of 12 months he must work under supervision and meet with his manager regularly to discuss his competency as a nurse and undertake training in dealing with vulnerable and difficult patients.

A NHS spokeswoman confirmed Mr Rafferty no longer works for the health board.